Federal Study Offers Dire Outlook on Child Insurance

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 — Twenty-one states will run out of money for children’s health insurance in the coming year, and at least nine of those states will exhaust their allotments in March if Congress simply continues spending at current levels, a new federal study says.

The findings added urgency to bipartisan talks on Capitol Hill intended to overcome an impasse over expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Top House Republicans, including Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the minority leader, met Tuesday with senators of both parties, including the chairman of the Finance Committee, Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, to seek a compromise.

Their goal is to revise a bill, vetoed by President Bush, to pick up Republican support in the House and gain enough votes to override another veto threatened by the president.

Mr. Bush complained that White House officials were not included in the discussions.

“After going alone and going nowhere, Congress should instead work with the administration on a bill that puts poor children first,” Mr. Bush said Tuesday.

Officials in charge of the child health program in California said Tuesday that they were adopting rules to allow the state to create a waiting list and to remove some of the 1.1 million children already on the rolls.

“The stalemate in Washington is having a real impact on children here,” said Lesley S. Cummings, executive director of the agency that runs the child health program in California. “Given continued uncertainty, we will have to start dropping children from the program — 64,000 a month, starting in January — to save money. This is getting less and less hypothetical.”

According to the new study, from the Congressional Research Service, the nine states that will run out of money by March are Alaska, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island.

The federal budget for the program is $5 billion for the current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1. But states, by their own estimates, expect to spend $7.6 billion. To continue coverage for people now enrolled in the 21 states would require an extra $1.6 billion just for the current fiscal year, the study said.

The bill vetoed by Mr. Bush, like a similar bill passed last week by the House, would provide $9 billion in the current fiscal year, or 80 percent more than the current allotments, the Congressional Research Service said. Allotments would more than double in 14 states, including Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi and North Carolina. In recent years, spending in these states has often exceeded allotments.

The Senate passed the original child health bill last month, 67 to 29, with 18 Republicans voting for it. Two of those Republicans, Senators Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, helped write the bill and have been negotiating with House members of both parties to round up Republican support for a revised version of the bill.

Tension among Republicans burst into the open on Tuesday as the Senate Republican whip, Trent Lott of Mississippi, complained that the Bush administration and Senate Republican leaders had been excluded from the negotiations.

“There are a multitude of problems with the bill” and “huge problems” with the negotiations, Mr. Lott said. He chided Mr. Hatch and Mr. Grassley, saying they had sought a deal on the child health program without adequately consulting him or the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Mr. Lott and Mr. McConnell voted against the bill last month.

“The biggest problem,” Mr. Lott said Tuesday, “is that we are still talking about a $35 billion” expansion of the program over the next five years, “instead of trying to come to a compromise on the money necessary to cover poor children first.”

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said Republican leaders appeared to be more interested in blocking Democratic accomplishments than in getting a deal on the child health bill. The Republicans, Mr. Reid said, are trying to “slow, stall and stop the legislative process.”